This Moment
by Scribbler1973
Summary: An 'All Things' first-time sap-o-rama


**Title: **This Moment

**By: **Scribbler1973

**Feedback**: Yes, please.  
**Rating**: M Mature content, adult situations  
**Warnings**: MSR, Sap, Angst  
**Disclaimer**: I don't own 'em. My only profit is shits and giggles.  
**Spoilers/Continuity**: All Things  
**Summary**: After Mulder leaves Scully sleeping on the couch.  
**Notes: **While I believe consummation of this relationship occurred well before this episode, everyone seems to have an "All Things" first-time story, and this is mine.

This Moment

It's been a monumental day for her. She locked eyes with her past, and she found the strength to let the past go. She looked deep within herself and felt no need to run from what she saw. She connected with her soul, and had an epiphany.

With her story, she's set spin to all the wheels of my mind.

No wonder she's exhausted.

There's so much peace in her face. I ache to touch it. If I kiss her, now, as she sleeps, I think I might taste it, share in it, make her peace my own. I lean over her, brush an errant lock of hair from her cheek, and hope she'll open her eyes. If her eyes meet mine in this moment, I'm certain I'll see welcome within the blue. Granted permission.

Her eyes don't open. I feel a familiar mix of resignation and relief as I grasp a blanket from the arm of the couch. Covering her, I chastise myself for the greed I'm feeling. She's already given me everything. Her trust and loyalty. Her unconditional friendship and love. She's given me a soul mate. These truths we both know without having to speak of them, just as we don't have to speak of her need to keep a part of her heart for herself, to do with as she wishes.

And it's not just her need, but mine. Even though I've stepped right up to the edge of our unspoken chasm more than once, something has always pulled me back. As much as I sometimes ache to lay claim to what little she hasn't given, the thought of attempting scares me. If I reach across that boundary, if we lay ourselves completely bare, what then? If we become lovers, do we risk losing everything else?

My eyes dart to her lips again. Heat erupts at my core and spreads. I feel a moan rising in my throat and I taste her name on my tongue.

Go to bed, Mulder.

With a hard swallow, I turn away from her and walk to the bedroom. Light from the streetlamp streams through the blinds, casting a bluish glow through the room and over the bed; this damned bed, which always feels so animus. It's too big, too empty, too goddamned mocking. It sneers at me. I hear it say in its haughty British accent, "_alone again, Fox? Well, let's try to keep it in your hand and off the sheets tonight, shall we?"_

This is why I prefer to sleep on the couch. The couch understands. The couch never teases. The couch is my friend.

The couch is presently occupied. The couch is a goddamned traitor.

I pull the door closed behind me, kick off my shoes, and eye the bed with loathing. "I hate you." I pull my shirt off over my head and toss it to the floor. "I don't want to hear another word." I step out of my jeans and boxers. "Not one goddamned word, you understand?"

I rip back the covers and then sit on the edge of the bed and pull off my socks. There's only one way I'm getting to sleep tonight, and as I lay back against the pillow I already have myself in hand.

Stroke, pump, think of anyone except for the red-head asleep on my couch. Just relax. Hear the giggle of the buxom blond from the tape setting silent and dark in the VCR, the tape I can't watch because it's out there with her and my traitorous couch.

Damn them both, because tonight there's no relief, no release, no peace, and I'm never, ever, ever going to get any damned sleep. Behind my closed eyelids I can't stop seeing her sleeping face. I can't quell my ache for her.

_Scully_.

I tell myself I don't hear her rising from the couch beyond the door, as if she's heard my mental call. I don't hear her open the door and slip into my bedroom in stocking feet.

I don't hear her breath quicken, because she doesn't see me lying here completely exposed.

I don't hear her slipping off her blazer. I sure as hell don't hear the zipper on her skirt.

I'm dreaming. Surly I'm dreaming, because I feel her standing over me. I feel the heat of her eyes traveling over my skin, slow and lingering. Face, neck, chest, navel. Over the swell of my bare hip, down the length of my thigh and then up again, slowly, to my groin, and to the center of that, which rises in greeting.

"Mulder. Look at me."

I don't open my eyes. I can't, because I'm finally asleep. This is a dream, and maybe if I keep dreaming, she'll touch me with more than just her eyes. If I keep dreaming, I can just feel, and I don't have to ruin the sensation with wonder and worry about what it all means, because she's not really here.

"Mulder. I know you're awake." Her voice trembles. "I can feel you thinking."

My heart beats against my ribcage as I open my eyes. She's staring down at me, the streetlamp casting shadow in dark stripes over the cream of her bare skin.

She's breathtaking. I shouldn't be looking at her, this isn't us, it's not safe, it's dangerous, possibly destructive and I can't look away. "God . . .Scully."

Her eyes continue their endless roam, searing, committing me to memory. "You wonder. You worry . . . me too, but . . . Mulder . . .I need . . .it doesn't have to mean anything."

My heart shreds. She's killing me. I sit up, and then slump over. My eyes fall to my hands, because, suddenly, I can't look at her at all. "Don't say that. Please don't tell me you mean that."

She sits on the edge of the bed beside me. Her hands find my face and lift it to hers. Our eyes lock. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. I don't. I'm just afraid . . .Mulder." Her hands slide from my face, breaking our physical connection, but her eyes look deeper into me.

I meet her there, in our place. Our haven of acceptance and trust. "Talk to me. Tell me."

"I told Daniel today that I don't know what I have. I lied. I know what I have. I know I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be, right here, right now, with you in this moment. One single, perfect moment in which I might give myself fully to what's mine, to satisfy desire and need, to touch and taste and feel and know . . .it means everything. Everything, Mulder. But only in this moment."

I touch her. I have to. I whisper the back of my hand down the side of her cheek, taking her tears with me. "I want what you want, Scully. I need what you need. But I won't . . .I can't fall over this cliff with you and promise to let you go once we hit bottom. It's already too late for that."

She chuckles. It's a hoarse, raw sound, filled with pain. My center recoils from its unspoken implication that I'm somehow the cause of her hurt. Even more, I'm afraid she'll vanish into the darkness and leave me here, cold and alone.

Instead, her arms slide around my neck. Her lips brush warm over my eyes, my nose, up the side of my cheek until she breathes into my ear, "that promise isn't yours to make. It never has been. Don't you know that?"

There's only one thing I know. One thing I've known forever, and longer. "I love you. God . . .Dana, I'm so in love with you."

"I know."

I want so badly to hear her say the same back to me, but she's finished with words. Her fingers twine in my hair as her lips find mine. Something electric shoots through me with her first taste, lighting my every nerve ending, setting every molecule to burn. Her tongue parts my lips and I'm helpless to do anything but to drown in her.

She tastes like honey and chamomile, like the tea we sipped while she spoke of fate and design and epiphanies in Buddhist temples. I pledge my undying devotion to them all as our kiss deepens. Bringing her with me, I lay back again against the pillow. Our moans meet and vibrate against our tongues as flesh presses against flesh.

I could die happy, just holding her like this, kissing her. Completely happy, even without being completely fulfilled. Until this moment, I'd never imagined such a thing was possible.

Strange, that I could so willingly die in the first moment I've ever felt fully alive, and more than just a little terrifying. I feel myself, quite unwillingly, tensing. Pulling back.

Warm against my throat, she whispers, "just this moment. That's all I'm taking, Mulder. I promise."

I have no conscious idea what she's talking about, but my body responds, molding back into hers. I'm aware only of needing to explore this woman in my arms, to know every inch of her, of a desperate desire to hear her call me by my first name . . . preferably in the throes of unfathomable passion.

We explore each other, trading touch for touch, taste for taste until there nowhere else to know except that final, ultimate connection. Eyes locked, we broach this last as we have everything in our partnership; as perfect opposites and perfect equals. Ying and Yang, neither dominant, a perfect synchronization of pulse and motion, climbing to the pinnacle together.

It's there, in that instant we've reached the top, her voice gasping, "Fox," my name from her lips calling me home, that I understand everything. In this moment, there is no definition of where she begins and I end. No Ying and Yang. No perfect opposites to check and balance the other out, to keep the other honest and true. We're one person, sharing one soul, and we're falling, careening over that edge, tumbling back on the mattress, and, like I promised, there's no way I can let her go. No way to become separate again.

Wrapped in each other, we lay quivering, slick with sweat. I can't get close enough. If I could somehow slip past her skin and become one with her flesh, it wouldn't be close enough. "Tell me you love me."

She says nothing, but she holds me tighter, and I understand she won't tell me, not because she doesn't, but because she does.

Because she loves me, she's going to separate us, part us back to opposites, redraw that invisible line. She'll reclaim her distance, but not that last piece of her heart . . .that's been mine all along.

She's looking into me, in that way she does, telling me with her eyes everything I need to hear, and all of the things I don't want her to say. She's giving me back to myself.

"No." I try and tear my eyes from hers, but I can't. "Scully, I don't want to go back."

And I don't. But somehow, I know I need to. "How did you know? How did you know it would be like this? And why didn't I know? Scully . . ."

She smiles. "I know because I've found my truth. I found it in you a long time ago, even though I wouldn't let myself see it. You . . .Mulder, you still need to find your truth."

"Maybe I have. Maybe I've found the only truth that really matters."

Her eyes shine. "If that were true, there'd be no 'maybe.'"

"No. Damn it, Scully, I . . ."

She places her fingers over my lips. "Shh. Listen to me. The only way you can love me is to be who you are. I know that. I accept it. And I'm going to be at your side, fighting, searching, believing in you. Someday, there'll be a time for us. For this. Not just a moment, but the rest of our lives."

I kiss her. Her lips, long and deep. The tip of her nose. Her closed eyelids. "Promise me."

Nothing. Just the deepening rhythm of her breathing. She's fallen asleep.

I'm going hold her and watch her sleep. I'm going to hold her until well after the sun comes up. I'm going to be waiting when those blue eyes open again. We'll look at truths again in the morning, and see if they still hold.

I close my eyes, just for a moment.

When I open them again, blinking hard against the mid-morning light, she's already gone.


End file.
